


November 3, 1981.

by frankiesin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 21:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankiesin/pseuds/frankiesin
Summary: Sirius spent his 21st birthday alone in a cell.





	November 3, 1981.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, age 22, realising that the Marauders were all younger than me when Shit Went Down: oh my god they're children.
> 
> Thus, a little angsty boi was written!

You are twenty years old. The world is at war. Your best friend is married and has a baby, in the middle of all the chaos. You feel like you can’t trust anyone anymore. Everything feels like chaos, wrapped in a tight scarf and slowly tightening around your neck. 

 

You are twenty years old. Remus is gone more than he is home. He’s explained to you that it’s on Dumbledore’s orders. That he has to go, because he’s the only one who can do this. You know this. You don’t care. You love him. You’re both so, so young. 

 

You are twenty years old. Your younger brother will never see twenty. You drink to forget that. No one sees this as odd, probably because you are twenty years old and in the middle of a war. You think about Regulus, and James, and how family has never meant blood but damn, sometimes you wish that blood meant a little more than it did. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t had to give up one brother for another. 

 

You are twenty years old. You are young and in love and somehow you’ve lost track of your fourth Marauder. Pete’s out there, fighting along with you and James and Remus, but he feels farther away now. The timid boy you once knew no longer exists. You wonder when you stopped trying to protect him. 

 

You are twenty years old. James and Lily and the baby have to go into hiding and you’re shaking thinking about why they have to hide in the first place. Now is not the time to joke about James using protection. There’s not enough protection in the world to keep that little family safe, and they want you to be their secret keeper. 

 

You are twenty years old. You suggest they use Pete. You’d suggest Remus, but you don’t recognise him anymore. You were in love with him, once, but now there are too many secrets. There is too much war in your hearts and not enough room for love any more. So you suggest Pete. No one would suspect Pete to be the secret keeper. You think you are clever. You also think that Remus might be the spy.

 

You are twenty years old. It is Halloween night. Everything is still aside from the skull lighting up the sky above the rubble. Nothing feels real anymore. You were wrong about Pete. You think you might always have been wrong about Pete. 

 

You are twenty years old. James is face down and you can’t turn him over. Lily is face up and you can’t look away from her dead green gaze. The baby… the baby is alive. The baby looks at you with Lily’s eyes and you are filled with too many emotions to work through. There is sadness, there is rage, there is a need to protect what is left. Most of all, there is shame. Shame that you chose wrong. Shame that this is somehow all your fault. 

 

You are twenty years old. You are ready to kill Pete with your own hands if you have to. You ignore the warnings from Remus at home and Hagrid at the Hollow and you ride off. The wind doesn’t affect you tonight. You are fuelled by rage and shame and the need to strike something. 

 

You are twenty years old. Pete is gone, save for the finger he sliced off to frame you. There are wizards surrounding you, raising their wands to your chest and demanding you drop yours. Calling you a monster. Talking of Azkaban. You find yourself laughing, rolling laughter that stems from fear and nerves and not much else. This is not how you expected your night to go. This is not how anyone expected the night to go. 

 

You are twenty years old. There was no trial. You sit in the cell and you stare at the wall and you shiver. You wonder if you will ever feel your age. Between the war and imprisonment, you have aged a hundred years. You feel as though you are the opposite of immortal. You are no longer young. You are no longer sure if alive is a word that applies to yourself. 

 

You are twenty one years young. The war is over. You cannot say who won or who lost. You do not know.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed!


End file.
